“U.S. Naval Section Base, Mayport, Florida, July 1943. Photo taken from the wind tower, looking South, towards the beaches. Yachts & Pogy Boats were the fleet at the base.” LS This early view of Naval Station Mayport was taken while photographer Loyd Sandgren was stationed there. The Navy photographer job first brought him to Jacksonville [...]

“Turrets at the Yellow Water Gunnery School. July 8, 1944. I think the range used over 3,000,000 rounds of 50mm bullets.” LS Training turret gunners on trailers fitted with aircraft machine gun turrets at one of the practice ranges at the Yellow Water Gunnery School. The WWII base was located on land North of the [...]

“U.S. Naval Air Station, Mayport, Florida. September 1944. This photo is looking North-East where the new base had a name change and was now an Airbase. Most of the airplanes were Corsairs, as many as 17 pilots were killed in one afternoon there. My job was to photograph the wrecks.” LS Loyd Sandgren first came [...]

A different angle of the hospital ship Ernest Hinds tied up on a pier on the Northbank of the St. Johns River in downtown Jacksonville. You get a good sense of the working waterfront that covered most of Jacksonville’s riverbank up until the 1960’s. This frame was shot during the 7 month period between 1946 [...]

This photograph of the sailing ship Sea Cloud traveling on the St Johns River with the original Prudential building rising in the background had a note by photographer Loyd Sandgren attached to it identifying the date of the event as 1949. After a bit of research, the history of the ship warranted more information than [...]

An additional image from the Loyd Sandgren collection for the Borum Boat Company in Jacksonville, Florida. One of their beautiful wood boats photographed with a model and a Grumman F9F Cougar jet on the runway of Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Additional photographs from the shoot can be seen here.

Sailors celebrate the end of the war with Japan at Naval Station Mayport in this photograph by then Navy photographer Loyd Sandgren. Germany had surrendered to the Allies May 7, 1945 ending the war in Europe. In an effort to bring the continuing war with Japan to a close on August 6, 1945 the United States [...]

This is another frame from a series of photographs showing a Group of congressmen at the NAS Jacksonville range according to Loyd Sandgren’s notes. Dated 10/15/45. Again, I think this was probably from the Naval Air Gunnery School at Yellow Water. Here is an additional photo on the pistol range of the third gentleman from the [...]

“Here is tow ships that were at our base. This was in 1944 and they were about as big as we could handle at the time.” LS Another early photo from U.S. Naval Frontier Base, Mayport, Florida. I could not track down any solid information about this particular ship but if any Navy Ship experts [...]

No information left behind by Loyd Sandgren but judging from the audience this was a Navy boxing match, probably from the 1940′s. Safe to say this was not the heavyweight division. Looks like they could use a little meat on their bones.